Detecting recombination events in bacterial genomes

Our next speaker for HIIT Otaniemi seminar series is Pekka Marttinen from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science.

 

All ICS@Aalto researchers are also warmly welcome to attend the seminar!

 

HIIT Otaniemi Seminar, Monday October 24, 13:15

Location: Computer Science Building, Hall T2

 

Pekka Marttinen

Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science

Aalto University School of Science

 

Title:

Detecting recombination events in bacterial genomes

 

Abstract:

Recombination is recognized in bacteria as an important evolutionary force by which segments of DNA in the recipient organism are replaced by foreign segments from a donor cell. Consequently, the genome of a bacterium may consist of consecutive blocks obtained from different ancestors. Apart from complicating the definition of the species concept in bacteria, recombination may change the phenotype of a bacterium by giving birth to bacteria with increased virulence or antibiotic resistance. As a result, the effect of recombination on the evolution of bacteria as well as on the health of humans may be considerable. The purpose of our research is to develop novel Bayesian statistical methodology to allow more accurate and practically feasible identification of re-combinogenic fragments within complete bacterial genomes from data sets comprising hundreds or thousands of bacterial samples. We accomplish this goal by describing the data in terms of a change-point clustering model, where the detected clusters represent distinct evolutionary lineages and the change-points represent locations in the genome where recombinations have caused modifications to the underlying clustering.

 

Welcome! 

 

-- 

Mehmet Gönen

Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT

Department of Information and Computer Science

Aalto University School of Science